Wander Bug
by With Death Comes More Death
Summary: A wounded centipede has somehow crawled its way into the desert...
1. Prologue: Insemination

**Mandatory Disclaimer:** I don't own either of these series… Wow, I feel like this is the first time in a long time that I've actually done a serious disclaimer to start a chapter. Huh. Feels Weird.

…

 **Prologue | Insemination.**

…

His legs felt heavy as he continued to trudge forward. Left foot, and then right foot… The both of them felt impossibly heavy as he drug whatever remained of his body through the unknown environment that he now found himself in.

Every part of his body was presently screaming at him, pleading with him to stop pushing forward. To quit it with all of his useless strugglings and just let wherever he was take him, but there was just something inside of him that kept him from doing so. That reminded him of what would happen if he were to allow himself the luxury of falling face first into the sand and wasting away.

He _needed_ to keep going. He _needed_ to save them. There were no 'if's', 'and's', or 'but's' about it. No complaints. No compromises. He wasn't going to let himself die until he did. If his body even attempted to disagree, he needed to squash the thought instantly, before any of it could spread to the rest of his body.

Negative thoughts for him, right now of all times, would act like cancer. It would grow and grow, festering with every burning step that he took, before then bringing his entire body to a screeching halt as it took the last of whatever energy he had left.

That couldn't happen. He wouldn't let it. Not for the fires that erupted within his joints with each grinding movement; not for the walls of invisible force and grit that continuously, relentlessly slammed into his front… Not even for the three holes in his body that made it seem like hot, molten steel was steadily pouring out of him.

 _Forward… Keep going… Come on…_ As he trudged forward, those words bounced around through his head relentlessly, his mind playing the role of an empty, stalagmite and stalactite-filled hole in the ground and the words themselves acting as though they were being played out of a broken speaker. AGH _! SHUT UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP!_

Stopping his impossible trek through the sand, he reached both his hands up and gripped at the sides of his head and began to pull on his sticky, matted hair. He needed to get it all out of his head. Everything. Even the thoughts that kept him pushing forward, the thoughts that stopped him from dying. Every time a word went through his head, it made him feel worse and worse. Every… Single… _Goddamn_ … Time…

 _Forwards… Just have to keep moving forward… One step at a—_ He thought that but unfortunately, his failing body refused to comply and his legs just gave out from under his weight, causing him to begin falling forwards.

Dull but still insanely intense pain roared through his body when it made contact with the sand that he had been trying (in vain) to traverse for what seemed like an eternity. The still very open holes in his body didn't help with the pain either, as the impact had forcibly shoved an unimaginable amount of sand particles right into them.

Body reflexively shriveling up into a ball upon feeling the extreme burning and irritation that the sand caused, he felt the beginning of a pained wail rise up in his throat, but he forced himself to stop before he could waste the energy.

 _Keep going… Come on, keep fucking going…!_ The words he told himself were harsh and much crasser than he'd normally use, but they were enough for him to shift out fetal position and roll onto his stomach. Reaching out in front of him with a shaky hand, he dug his strengthless fingers into the sand and tried to drag himself forwards, but he found himself not even a centimeter closer to his goal as the sand just absorbed his clawing, nullifying the effort completely. _You aren't dead yet…! You can still—! You can still—!_

When that last thought died in his head, that was when he felt his arm fall limp against the ground and with that, came an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness. It overtook him so fast, yet it still came agonizingly slow, like a tide that was coming to drown a man that had been buried up to his neck in sand.

As he lay there motionlessly, waiting for the wave that was unconscious overtake to him completely, a single positive thought crept into his mind. A small part of himself wanted to thank the sand that caused him so much anguish.

Why? Because that very anguish provided him some sense of grounding. If it were not for that, he would've thought that he had spent the entire time struggling in an empty void and that prospect in itself, filled him with more dread than anything. At least, after all of his thrashing around against the cold grip of death, he could say that he tried. That, he didn't just lie down and die like the weakling he used to be. Really, it wasn't much to take solace in, but it was something at the very least.

As he lay there on the irritating sand, motionless and completely drained of all energy, he could feel the last of his being begin to slip away from his body, strangely reminding him of how it felt to lie down in the rain. What he knew he was and his very perception of the world around him felt like all of the individual drops of water combining into much larger ones, before then slowly traveling down the surface of his skin, eventually reaching the ground and evaporating away.

… _Hm, what…?_ That thought ran through his head as he noticed one more thing before consciousness left him. The sand underneath him… It had moved…

…

The first thing that told him that he wasn't dead just quite yet was the warmth that surrounded him. It wasn't any sort of natural warmth like one would get from the rays of the Sun, but an oppressive kind. One that suffocated and pressed in on him from all sides like a sort of mushy, slimy vice.

 _Wha… What the…?_

…

 **Chapter End.**

* * *

Here. New project for your faces. This time I'm going to be the pretentious and artsy ass that I've become over the past few months. Expect more original content from this one. Like, don't even expect actual canon RWBY plot to show up for a decent bit.

I'll probably end up updating once every month given all that's happening in my life right now. Note, this chapter is probably going to be the shortest of the story.

Also, I have a Pat Reon now if you want to give me money for some reason. Just look my name up on the site and you'll find me. I'm doing paid commissions if any of you want me to do things for you.


	2. Prologue 2: Convulsion

**Mandatory Disclaimer:** I really want to stop taking these disclaimers seriously again, but I realize that I kind of have to for the sake of keeping a professional atmosphere. So… Fuck my life.

…

 **Prologue 2 | Convulsion.**

…

The world moved in slow motion as Tab threw herself back to avoid the BullHead crashing through the roof of the train car she had been riding in for the past several hours. She just _barely_ avoided being crushed, which she was glad for, considering how embarrassing it would've been to have _that_ be listed as her cause of death in the after action reports. She could just imagine it now: the utter disbelief on her family's faces as the coroner explained to them that she, a professional Huntress for three years, had been killed by a ship she herself had shot down…

 _Man, what a horrible thing to think about in the middle of a combat situation,_ Tab thought, glancing around the slowed-down world. She began taking note of all the little things-like how the ceiling of the metal train car scraping against the BullHead created an enormous plume of bright, yellow-orange sparks that poured out from the initial point of impact in all directions. Or how the momentum of the BullHead had, unfortunately caused the train car to derail. Tab figured she had only a few seconds before it toppled.

Seeing as that would be _incredibly_ inconvenient, Tab sprang into action. Raising her gun, she pointed the barrel to her direct right, an action that took a fair amount of time considering her boy moved just as fast as everything else (which, currently, was very slow), and pulled the trigger when she found the right angle.

If the gun in Tab's hand had been any but her own, the action would've done nothing to save her. Thankfully, it _was_ her gun, and it was currently on the setting that gave it enough stopping power to knock a BullHead right out of the sky with a single shot. And, as her father used to say, 'a gunshot is always followed by some sort of recoil'.

Now, she _highly_ doubted that he ever meant for her to take it so literally, but the situation was just perfect that she could really care less.

That train of thought stopped when the molasses-like world around Tab abruptly sped back up to normal speed, doing so right as the bullet was sent shooting out towards the wall to her right. The explosion caused by the extremely high-powered round sent her flying out of the doors of the train car like a bat out of hell, just as the kinetic energy of the crash caused the metal carriage to tip over. She was lucky that the car was the caboose.

Unfortunately, Tab's momentary solution to the problem only created a much bigger one. Now she was flying through the air, her body aimed towards the door of the next car. In her rush to move through slow motion and act, she had completely forgotten that the door she was now shooting towards wasn't even open.

A stinging pain quickly spread through the side of her body as Tab slammed clean through the door, cold steel thankfully meeting the dried skin of her leather duster, which acted as makeshift padding against the impact and dulled whatever pain she normally would've felt. The same, however, couldn't be said of her head, which bounced off the door the moment it hit the ground.

 _Well, that could've been much worse,_ Tab's rattled mind told her rattled body, as she rolled herself onto her chest with a disoriented grunt, she pushed herself to her feet. _Note to self, check all doors before doing something like that again._

Disorientation keeping her from standing all the way upright, Tab decided that it would best to take a moment and make sure that her body was still whole and fully-functioning, which, from just a quick glance, seemed to be the case—something that she considered to be a good thing since she really liked her body. She liked it a lot, actually.

" _Ugh_ …" There was an all-too-familiar groan from behind Tab. She jumped, only just stopping herself from spinning and filling the source with bullets. "I suppose it was rather presumptuous of me to assume you'd changed at all, Tabby."

The sound of someone calling her by her actual name made Tab's eyes widen, then narrow, before she then let out a frustrated sigh. There was only _one_ person in all of Remnant who would dare call her that. She'd hoped that it would be a lifetime before she came face to face with him again. Still, she wasn't one to be left speechless, by _anyone_.

"Aw, what?! _Me_? Change? Pft, c'mon!" Tabby turned around to face the speaker, making sure to have every bit of annoyance in her voice painfully apparent. There, standing before her, was exactly who she thought it'd be. She hadn't seen the guy in awhile-a long while, in fact-and he hadn't changed a bit from when she last saw him. Everything about him seemed pretty much in line with what she remembered, though his grey hair was slicked back now, and his face had visible signs of his advancing age.

Tab scowled. "Who do you think you're talking to right now? Why in the world would I change a thing about myself?!" She threw her arms out to help emphasize the point she was trying to make. " _You_ , on the other hand!" She pointed at the man with her free pointer finger (the other was still caressing the trigger of her gun) at the man. "From what I can tell, you've changed a _lot_!"

"Really now?" The grey-haired bastard asked, an all-too-familiar furrow of the brows suddenly making its way onto his face. "You care to enlighten me?"

A cocky smirk crept onto Tab's lips. "Well, to be honest, I don't remember your little schemes being this shitty. Like, seriously? First off, you're robbing a government owned train, which is already all _kinds_ of stupid, but if that's not enough, you're robbing the government owned train that _I_ got tasked with guarding!" The gunslinger couldn't help the bark of mocking laughter that escaped from her mouth as she planted her leather-covered knuckles on her hips. "That's a whole lot of bad ideas to be contained in a single plan, if I say so myself, which should say a _lot_ coming from _me_ of all people."

There was a moment of silence before her old "acquaintance" said anything back to her. "Times have been hard, Tabby."

Tab gave another mocking laugh.

The man shook his head as he spoke, a sudden edge in his voice, right hand slowly reaching over the corresponding shoulder to grip the weapon that was slung on his back–the first step to what they both knew was going to happen between the two of them. "You of all people should understand."

Once again, he had said something that greatly amused Tab, though such a reaction was most likely unintentional on his part. Unlike last time though, the amusement was a lot more bitter in nature–a direct result of a certain nerve being pricked. "Yeah," she said, trying to keep the irritation from her voice. "That's the understatement of the century if I've ever heard it."

"Though…" Tabby trailed off as she raised her weapon and pointed its barrel right at the walking flash from her past, thumb cocking back her revolver's hammer in preparation. "Isn't that kind of rich coming from you, Gris?"

Of course, the guy didn't even understand what she was trying to get at… The bastard.

* * *

When consciousness came back to him, it did so suddenly; a newfound, burning pain traveling through the semi-exposed skin of his back. It felt as if he'd bellyflopped into a pool from a great height, back-first. He would've arched his back if he had the energy to do so, but he didn't. All that he could really do was lie there as the burning fizzled away gradually, giving way to a strange, faint tingling sensation that quickly spread to the rest his body. It would've bothered him if not for his body's lack of focus on it.

The tingling sensation didn't cover the front of his body, so what he felt through it took most of his attention. He could feel the same stuffy, slimy humidity that he did earlier before he blacked out, though it was no longer as invasive as earlier.

Not just that, though. There was something else in the air, something that made his once numb muscles twitch in recognition.

 _Sweetness…? Why…?_

…

 **Chapter End.**

* * *

Woah, OC's? From me of all people? I know, that's shocking as fuck from an unoriginal hack like me. Maybe this is a sign for things to come with this story.

Anyways, yeah, this story is going to feature a pretty good deal of OC's and original content and that sort of shit. Don't get me wrong, I'll somehow weave in RWBY plot into this later on, but nowhere near the same way as my other story, Tokyo Ghoul: Remnant. I didn't make this story to rehash anything from it. Trust me when I say that I did it to be the edgy, pretentious, art house asshole that I am-an edgy, pretentious, art house asshole that has a certain love for classic manga series, Berserk.

I hope you'll respect that and will keep reading this.

P.S: FineChyna edited and beta-ed this. Give her some love. Not because of this story, though. Do so because she's great and she deserves it, and has a story of her own that's great and deserves it. Read it if you haven't. It's called _Glass Lilies_. It's cool. I also sorta photoshopped the cover art for it, though she wouldn't give me the credit.

(Chyna here: Let the record show I didn't name him specifically because I didn't want people hounding him for cover art because of me.)


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